Flight of the Steel Butterfly
by Spaztique
Summary: Brett is a middle schooler who gets gapped to Gensokyo by Yukari, but this is not his story: this is the story of his sister, Sara. Desperate to save her lazy brother, Sara travels all the way to the Japanese wonderland of Gensokyo, forgetting that she might not be so perfect herself... (Special thanks to these peeps for proofreading: ChibiChen, magic9mushroom)
1. Chapter 1

Every other day, between the hours of four and ten PM, you could hear the yelling all throughout the neighborhood. The yells between two teenage kids penetrated the walls of their well-insulated suburban house.

"Brett, stop leaving your crap all over the living room!"

"You're not my mom! Clean it yourself!"

You'd swear little trivial things like leaving soda cans on the floor, not turning off the water faucet, leaving refrigerator door open were on the same level as murder. Brett and Sara were always at eachother's throats: Brett wanted to laze around, play video games, do what he calls, "live his middle school years like a middle schooler," and Sara wanted him to grow up. Mind you, Sara was a freshman in high school and Brett was two years younger, but when Sara was his age, she was already working on remote control robots.

Well, she never finished any of them, but hey, it was better off than what Brett was doing.

"Brett, turn down that damn game," she'd yell, "It sounds like a warzone in here!"

"How else am I supposed to play Call of Duty without the volume at full blast?," he'd ask, "This is war!"

Sometimes, she'd unplug his controller and hurl it across the wall, or shut off the TV, or just downright unplug the power. Then he'd hit her, and she'd hit him.

She'd yell, "Stop wasting your life!"

He'd yell, "I wish you were dead!"

The fists would fly a little more, and then one of them would return to their room. Most of the time, it was Sara. That day, it was Sara first and Brett second.

Sara returned to her room, locked the door, turned on the radio to the classic rock station, and sulked at her workbench. Sara wanted something uplifting, and that day, it was AC/DC's rather somber "Hell's Bells."

_Just concentrate on the guitar riffs, _she thought, still hurt from the fight.

She sighed and looked around at her current projects: a hovercraft, a glider, a small catapult, and a robotic caterpillar that, when finished, would inch along. These projects reached back to her middle school days, and she had never finished any of them. Sometimes, she'd get more ideas, write down a laundry list of more things she could develop, but in the end, she never got around to any of them. Even then, if she started yet another project, she'd never get around to finishing any of them.  
_  
It's funny, _she thought, _I keep telling Brett to stop being lazy, and here I am with all of this crap._

She toyed with the robotic caterpillar, tweaking the leg settings, but then just pushed everything else away after not feeling up for it.

_Maybe I should finish something for once. I want to be an example for Brett. I want him to follow in my footsteps... but am I really somebody Brett wants to follow?..._

The whole neighborhood knew Sara hated Brett: their endless fighting made that plenty clear. The only one that didn't believe Sara hated Brett was Sara herself, and the fact nobody else believed her, not even their own parents, hurt more than any insult or punch she could ever throw at Brett.

_One day, I'll get to tell Brett, "I'm so proud of you, I'm glad you're my brother, and I've always loved you."_

One day...

* * *

Sara got up when she heard a strange hum sound Brett's room. She got out of her chair and yelled, "Brett, what was that?"

"Mind your own business," he yelled.

By then, the song on the radio changed to Dire Straights "Money For Nothing," but Sara switched the radio off to listen into Brett's room. She heard a muffled conversation: the speaker sounded female.

She yelled, "Does mom know you have somebody over?"

"I said mind your own damn business," he yelled back.

She sat back down and stared at her stuff, thinking about just getting back to work, but in the background, she heard that muffled conversation through the door. After she couldn't take it anymore, she took a deep breath, left her room, and walked over to Brett's door. She knelt down to the carpet, put her ear up to the crack of the door, and listened.

A womanly voice said, "Aren't you tired of your sister?"

"Of course I am," he said, "I'd give anything to get away from her."

_That much is obvious, _she thought.

"In Gensokyo," the woman said, "you'll never have to worry about school, homework, your parents, or that monster of a sister of yours."

Sara listened more intently: she didn't know whether this was some kind of game or cryptic codeword or something sinister.

He asked, "Can you take me there?"

The woman said, "Yes, and soon as you are ready."

The hum sound bellowed from his room. A wind rushed under the door.

_What the...?_

"Let me get my games," he said.

"You won't need them," the woman said, "There's no power-"

The door swung up, and Sara looked up to see Brett, a blonde woman in a purple and white dress, and what looked like a giant void into a horizon of inhuman, demonic eyes. The sight made Sara scream and crawl back.

"Oh dear," the woman said, folding her arms, shaking her head.

"Sara," Brett yelled, "Out of my way! I'm off to a fantasy world and I'm bringing my games!"

Before Sara could yell at Brett, the woman said, "You'll have nowhere to plug your console in. If you're really interested in going to Gensokyo, you'll just follow me through this gap." The woman with blonde hair and glowing eye slits looked down at Sara and floated towards her. Sara would have hyperventilated if she could breath at all. She said, "I'm sorry for doing this on such short notice, Miss Letrain, but my realm is in need of your brother. If it makes you feel any better, consider today the last day you will ever have to get into an argument with him."

Sara wheezed through her fear, "Brett, please, don't go with her."

"Make me," he said.

The woman said, "Brett, I think it's time to go."

Sara yelled, "Please don't take my brother! Please! I'll do anything!"

The woman said, "I'm sorry, but even if I were to turn him back, he would never want to stay here with you. I'm doing him a favor. Farewell."

Sara continued screaming, "Wait! Wait!," as Brett and the woman crossed into the purple void. The void closed shut with yet another loud hum.

Sara sat in the hallway for a while, confused, shocked, scared at what she had just witnessed. For a while, all she could hear was the air conditioner, the empty house, and her pounding heart...

The neighborhood then heard screaming again: this time, it was just the girl, alone, screaming for hours, and hours, and hours.

* * *

When Sara's parents came home, of course they didn't believe her some monster, alien, whatever came and swallowed Brett into a purple void. They only assumed it was a prank or that he was at a friend's house.

Then, three days passed, and Brett was still gone. Then a week. Then a month. Her parents just assumed he ran away and put all of the blame on Sara for her constant battering of Brett. Missing alerts went out, but Sara knew nobody would find Brett: he was off in what was probably another dimension.

Sara's grades declined, her time with her friends grew shorter and shorter, all she could do was think of that day when Brett was swallowed into that purple void, and then think of all of those horrible things she said to Brett.

"You're a lazy good-for-nothing and you're never going to make anything of yourself!"

"Stop acting like an idiot, you idiot!"

"Brett, when you're still living at this house when you're 42, I will not feel sorry for you."

Now he was gone, and as her parents kept telling her (but not in the way they think), it was her fault.

When it couldn't build any more, Sara turned to research: just what the hell took Brett?

She then spent every lunch period at school in the library looking up mythological, cryptozoological, or alien creatures matching that woman's description. Over the course of several weeks and many dubious sources and books, she could piece together this: across various worldwide legends, there exists a boogeyman-like woman who is essentially part mentor, part trickster, part child eater. The most popular is the Russian Baba Yaga, but the Baba Yaga is far too old and not as high-tech as this creature.

This thing was a Japanese-style youkai known under legend as Yukari Yakumo, known to control the borders and boundaries of physical properties. According to legend, Yukari will bring children from the outside world into her realm known as the Illusionary Realm of Gensokyo. Why she does this is unknown: conflicting sources say she does this to eat the children, others say she does this to teach them a lesson, others say she does it merely to give them a better home. Of course, none of these books took any of this seriously: these legends are only for entertainment purposes.

But Sara knew these weren't just legends: Yukari wa real, and if she was real, Gensokyo was real, too. If they're both real, then Brett must be in Gensokyo, but that would also give Sara this new problem: Brett was not just in a fantasy world, but all the way in Japan.  
_  
If Brett is still alive and in a Japanese fantasy world, _she thought, _I can still get him back._  
_  
I don't know how I'll do it, but I will rescue Brett and prove how much I care for him, no matter what._


	2. Chapter 2

Two and a half years had passed when Sara found herself in Narita International Airport, able to understand every sign she passed perfectly.

Not longer after confirming the legend of Gensokyo and realizing her brother was in Japan, Sara had developed a mania for Japan: Japanese language, Japanese culture, Japanese everything. Her parents wondered if she had become a anime geek to cope with the loss of her brother, but no: this was all just preparation for the biggest venture she would ever commit to. Those inventions may have collected dust over the years, but this wasn't something Sara was just going to give up on.

Airport security asked for the necessary IDs and whatnot in simple English. Sara spoke back in shockingly good Japanese: yes, she had an accent, but it's hard to get the pronunciation down when most of your studying was alone. After that, she made a mad dash to the rail station, ignoring the grand metropolis of Tokyo.

Every day after school or her summer jobs, it was two hours of Japanese studying, two hours of Japanese practice, an hour of studying mythology, and then anything else like school work or spare oddjobs to raise money for her trip. Over the course of two years, Sara had amassed a fortune for her junior year winter vacation of "hiking in Japan." At first, people were bemused that Sara would take up this "hobby," but her mania grew and grew. She stopped seeing her friends, her soured relationship with her parents only got worse when she withdrew into her Japanese studies, and at school, she grew bitter and irritable, telling anyone reaching out to her, "I don't have any time. I need to study."

The train trip to Kofu, Yamanashi was surprisingly short: fast train, small island. If Kofu didn't work out, it was then off to Nagano, then Kyoto. Most of the legends put Gensokyo somewhere around the Chuubu region in the middle of Honshu, but conflicting sources said it was near Kyoto. Either way, she had more than a thousand dollars left over and enough supplies to camp out in the middle of nowhere if she had to. Sara had prepared for camping, anyway: with where she was going, camping was the least of her worries.

When mythological research hit its saturation point, Sara focused all of her time on preparing for survival. Despite her thousand dollar stash, Sara asked her parents to pay for martial arts lessons, trips to the gun range, skydiving lessons, and her own backpacking equipment. After non-stop goading and complaining, Sara got what she wanted: it worked for Brett, so of course it was going to work for her, even though they told her, "We'd expect this out of Brett, not you." In the months leading up to the trip, Sara practiced camping out in the local state park, then just out in the middle of nowhere with the aid of her parents driving her home, and then without their aid. She was a fluent Japanese speaker who could survive out in the middle of nowhere, but what was the purpose of all of this? Of all of the random hobbies, why would Sara suddenly want to learn how to camp in Japanese wilderness? Her parents eventually asked why she wanted to do this one winter, and she had no answer other than, "It just sounds like a really neat trip to have. Besides, I'm thinking it through, aren't I?" After all, telling them she was going to Japan to search for a mythical fantasy realm to rescue her brother, who had been pronounced dead for roughly a year, was out of the question.

With a canteen backpack, a week's supply of snacks, and all of the necessary survival gear, Sara eventually was at the foot of the towering, snow-peaked Minami Alps. For as small as Japan is, virtually every stretch of land was densely populated, but the Alps still had some relatively untouched areas. Somewhere between all of these tall mountains, a little northeast of Mt. Yatsugatake, is a particularly empty region few tourists travel through, and the Japanese image boards cite it as a haven for ghost stories and legends. The most common one is this: at the entrance to the this mythical fantasy land is a very modest-looking Shinto shrine, and if you can convince the shrine maiden there to let you through to the other side, you can see the land of Gensokyo, but beware, because once inside, you will be in the land of monsters, demons, and all manner of youkai.

Traveling through dense forests and up high mountain paths, this was the least of Sara's worries. Sara was on a wild goose chase in the Japanese highlands looking for a fantasy realm across what could potentially be fifty kilometers worth of land, and if she was wrong, she'd have to start over all the way in Kyoto.

It was never until this point Sara asked, "What have I gotten myself into?," or, "What the hell am I doing?" When they started springing to mind, she had to stifle her thoughts: she did not want to have wasted two and a half years of her life studying, studying, and throwing her life away all for nothing.

* * *

Winters in Japan are much colder than you'd think they are: the highs get around to the fifties in Fahrenheit, and the lows drop to the thirties. The dense red and yellow forest was also quite humid, making the cold air stick to Sara's uncovered face. She wore all dark green in hopes of blending into the forest: green jacket, dark green cargoes, green knit cap. Her blonde hair was tied into a ponytail and hidden into her jacket. After hours of hiking, she sat on the damp forest floor and leaned back against her heavy backpack. She drank from the blue tube dangling over her shoulder from her canteen backpack, had another granola bar, and wondered if she had gone too far from the forest. For a while, she heard a low buzzing sound, most likely that of a transformer, and maybe she had accidentally back to civilization.

_I'm not crazy, _she kept telling herself over and over,_ I know I saw something took my brother, and everything points to here. This isn't a waste of time. I did the right thing. I didn't just come out here for nothing._

Sara's shoulder's ached from carrying all of that food and camping supplies, her legs were nearly ready to give out, and her body shivered. She wanted to distract herself from this seemingly pointless hike: look at the lush golden Japanese wilderness, breath in the fresh, heady scent of the forest, hear the sounds of the trees rustling, forget the fact you're in the middle of nowhere in another country, looking for a mythological fantasy world.

Staring up at the tall trees, Sara's vision blurred and she instinctively rubbed her eyes. When she looked back at the tree tops, her vision was still blurry. To test her focus, she looked at her hands, which looked perfectly fine, and then out at the immediate ground, which looked fine, and then saw a point in the ground where two sets of leaves blended into eachother. She jumped back to her feet upon seeing this, and this blurring of leaves and foliage continued in a straight line, waving in and out like a curtain billowing in the breeze. When she walked closer, the buzzing sound got louder. Sara nearly giggled at what she had found.

_This is it! This is the border to Gensokyo!_

Sara jogged along the line where the plants blurred into eachother. She was careful not to actually cross into the border itself, because it was the only thing separating her from a myriad of all sorts of monsters. Though aching joints, Sara paced herself down the slippery slopes, rocky hills, and wet grass and leaves, hoping to eventually reach that shrine and gain safe passage into Gensokyo.

An hour of jogging later, Sara froze when she saw a tree with windows and a small door, just on the edge of the border to Gensokyo. She didn't want to get any closer to that tree, because who knows who or what could be living inside, but off in the distance, she saw, exactly as the books described, a modest Shinto shrine.

Rather than make any preparations against that tiny tree house, she drank from her backpack canteen, focused on the shrine, and made a mad dash through the border, pushing through all of the pain and ache. She kept her eyes fixated on the shrine, never looking back, never looking around. She reached the back stoop, climbed up, and rushed inside.

The inside of the shrine looked brand new, as if it had been built or rebuilt not long ago, but abandoned: dark wood floors, dark wood walls, and altar with numerous offerings (mostly food and alcohol), and a small table.

"Is anyone here?!," she shouted.

"Hold on," said a girlish voice from the other side of the shrine, "I'll be right there."

Sara heard no footsteps or any sense of urgency. She waited for the girl, taking off her shoes in the meantime, but that girl made no sound of any kind of movement.

Then, by the opposite entrance, there was a loud thud and shuffling feet. Coming from the outside was a girl in a red dress and white sleeves tied to her arms, holding a stick with a paper tassel at the end.

"Are you okay?," she asked. She paused, stared at Sara with a thoughtful look, and then asked, "More importantly, can you understand what I'm saying?"

"Perfectly well," Sara said, nodding.

"I see," the girl said. She bowed, and said, "I am Reimu Hakurei, shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine."

"I'm Sara Letrain from overseas," Sara said, bowing, "Nice making your acquaintance."

"Same," Reimu blurted, catching Sara off-guard, "How may I help you?"

"I'm looking for my brother," Sara said, "I came all the way from overseas to get him back. I know a youkai took him from his room and brought him here. She-"

"She was wearing a white and purple dress," Reimu blurted in a flat tone, "and she brought him into a purple gap, right?"

"Yeah," she said, "How did you know?"

Reimu sighed and crossed her arms. She said, "This isn't the first time this has happened. Your brother was spirited away by Yukari Yakumo, who has a long history of doing this. I'm sorry to say this, but I'm afraid your brother is going to be in Gensokyo for a very long time."

"Not if I can help it," Sara said, "I've been studying for years, and I'm more than ready to bring the fight to this Yukari Yakumo lady. I need to learn the lay of the land, learn how to fight her, and bring my brother home!"

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," she said, "I have fought Yukari more than once, and I can safely say she is one of the most dangerous youkai in Gensokyo, if not the single most. Don't think because you have looked up Yukari that you can safely fight her, let alone save your brother, assuming he's even alive. After all, outsiders don't exactly have a very long shelf life here." Reimu paced to the entrance where Sara came from and said, "One of my jobs is escorting outsiders back across the border. Children who have been spirited away by Yukari tend to never want to leave, so I specialize in lost hikers. As much as it pains me to say this, I'm afraid your best option is to return home."

Sara felt a knot in her chest at the very thought of turning back after coming all this way. She said, "I can't."

"I admire your tenacity," she said, "but it is far too dangerous here. Truth be told, you're the first person to have traveled this far for something like this, but unless you have a death wish, turn back now."

"I did my research," she said. She pointed at Reimu's stick and said, "That's a gohei, used in purification rituals and can be used against youkai, and I know you must have amulets. In theory, you can throw them and they'll home in on evil spirits. I also know beans work on a great number of demons. I'm no shrine maiden, but if I have to make my own equipment, I will: I am an engineer you know!"

"I get the point," Reimu said, "It's bad enough your brother is stuck here, and I don't want to endanger anyone else by letting more outsiders into Gensokyo." Reimu leaned in and said, "I won't tell you again: **leave****.** It's for your own good."

Sara gave Reimu an annoyed look and said, "Fine. I guess I'll be leaving."

"Good," she said, "I'll escort you to the border."

"That won't be necessary," she said, walking to the back.

"I insist," Reimu said, following her, "There are fairies living on the border of Gensokyo and they love pranking visitors."

Reimu followed Sara back to the border, but when Sara crossed through, she didn't budge.

Reimu pointed out east with her wand and said, "If keep walking that way, you'll reach a city. They'll help you get back home."

"I know," Sara said, dropping her backpack. Reimu watched in confusion as Sara unpacked a small blue bag, unzipped it, and pulled out a tent.

"What are you doing?," Reimu asked.

"I'm setting up camp," Sara said.

"No you're not," Reimu yelled, "You're leaving."

Sara unfolded the lump of synthetic fabric that was her tent. "If I'm going to travel into Gensokyo," she said, "I need a home base outside of the border so the youkai won't get me."

"That youkai who took your brother can still breach this border," Reimu said.

Sara took the poles out of the bag. She said, "You can't scare me. Yukari hibernates in the winter. I specifically picked coming here in winter to ensure I wouldn't encounter her." She put the pole together, looked at Reimu, and said, "As I've said, I prepared for everything."

Sara took out another pole and put it together, and Reimu just watched, sighed, and looked around in the forest. She put her free hand to her head and said, "There's really nothing I can do to make you turn back, huh?"

Sara slid the pole through the holes on top of her tent and said, "Nope."

Sara took the other pole and crawled around to the other side of the tent to put the next pole in. Before she could slip it in, Reimu said, "You know, you're going to freeze to death out here."

Sara looked up and yelled, "I said I'm not turning back!"

"I know you're not," Reimu said, "but I have a storehouse with a spare bed."

Sara's work on the tent slowed to a stop, and she looked up at Reimu.

Reimu continued, "You can stay there in the meantime, but only if you promise to not go out into Gensokyo on your own. I'll look into getting the other incident resolvers to find your brother. Just be patient, and we'll find out what happened to him..."

Sara looked down at her unfurled tent, then back up at Reimu.

Reimu asked, "How does that sound?"

Sara smiled, grabbed the giant lump that was her semi-set-up tent, and said, "Sounds great. Thank you very much."

As they walked back through the border, Reimu said, "I hope you're still thanking me when you realize what you're getting yourself into."

* * *

The Hakurei Shrine storehouse was a mess of discarded newspapers, piled around a bed and a storage chest. Sara unpacked everything on top of the newspapers like makeshift shelves: piles of granola bars, water-cleaning tools, and several changes of clothes. She had her phone and a phone charger, but it was shut off: she had to save the batteries for the return home, and it's not like she had anywhere to plug it in. Sara wanted to go running off into Gensokyo, but this wasn't going to work: she had no weapons and no practical knowledge of what was out there. While she could bluff that maiden, this was no longer just theories and stories from a book: this was the real thing. This was a real fantasy world.

_This is what I studied for, _she kept thinking on that first restless night in the cold storehouse, _I can handle this._

The next couple of days were uneventful: Reimu would knock on the storehouse every couple of hours and invite her into the shrine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sara was thankful for acquiring a taste for green tea (especially as strong as Reimu served it). The rest of it was mostly rice, noodles, and on special occasions, shrimp tempura. Sara suspected Reimu didn't eat much, and given how lonely and quiet it was out there in the middle of nowhere, it was a wonder where she got her food from.

"There is a human village not far from here," Reimu once told her, "but don't go there on your own: the trek there too dangerous."

"Do you think my brother could be there?," she asked.

Reimu said, "We'll figure that out later."

Occasionally, Sara would open the door to the storehouse and see what Reimu was up to, but it looked like she was never up to much: she'd sweep leaves off the front path of the shrine, talk to visitors, and sit on the front stoop. The most common visitor was what looked like a classic witch, only she looked to be Reimu's age. Sara just stayed back, watched for a bit, and returned inside.

To fill the uneventful days, Sara looked through the numerous newspapers filling the storehouse: mostly articles on the various happenings and battles accompanied by dazzling pictures of aerial battles.

"Tengu Army in standoff against new shrine on Youkai Mountain." The accompanying picture showed bird-like humanoids firing bullet-like winds from leaf fans, aimed at an army of fairies in green uniforms and helmets, shooting back with what looked like giant flowers.

"Battle Royale at Myouren Temple between Buddhist Youkai, Youkai Hunters, and Hermits." The accompanying picture showed Reimu, that witch, two other girls, and older women in fancier outfits back to back, all surrounded by a swirl of glowing bullets.

One article, however, caught Sara's eye without any well-framed battles.

"Yukari Yakumo, Netherworld Ghosts, Scarlet Devil Mansion, and local Youkai Hunters escape Lunar Army." A group surrounded a pool, holding wine glasses high, and part of that group was both Reimu and the woman who took Sara's brother, that snake-eyed blondie Yukari Yakumo. Reading the rest of the article, it turned out Reimu had actually worked with Yukari once before during another incident. Luckily, the article detailed that she had a rivalry with the residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, a group of rather eclectic vampires, so perhaps they could aid her in getting her brother back.

One morning, Reimu didn't show up, and there was the sound of low rumbling outside; like a firework display, or perhaps the outside of the rifle range Sara frequented.

Sara slid open the door and peered outside. The pops and booms were much much more audible, but Sara couldn't see anything until walking out in front of the shrine. There, she saw twisting, smoking trails of glowing shots flying in all directions and small figures chasing eachother across the clouds, and she froze, partly paralyzed by beauty, mostly paralyzed by fear. The number of projectiles was far, far larger than anything Sara could have ever anticipated for a magic battle: as if opposing firework companies were firing their grand finales at eachother at the same time, only there were more than fifty of them firing at once.

When Sara unfroze, she dashed away back to the storehouse and slammed the door: with an incident like this, the fairies by the border would most likely be restless, so it was a better idea to just hole up in the storehouse and hope the fight wouldn't come any closer.

In addition to worrying about herself, she kept praying, _Please don't let my brother be in that mess..._

Hours passed, and the booms and pops reduced to nothing. Sara stuck around in the storehouse, waiting for Reimu to hopefully return.

There was a knock later that night: Reimu opened the door and said, "Sorry I'm late. Dinner is ready."

Sara nodded and followed her into the shrine. From the outside, Sara heard laughing and talking.

Inside, one girl said, "I was this close from shooting her down, but then that last spell card got me."

Another asked, "Did you focus?"

The girl said, "Yeah."

Inside the shrine, a group of all myriad of girls were gathered around the table, drinking tea and having snacks. The witch Sara saw earlier said, "I noticed ya' weren't streamin': that can be a life-saver."

"That's the thing," the girl in the blue dress and green hair said, "I'm still getting the hang of streaming. I just improvise everything, really."

When they saw Reimu and Sara, everyone cheered and welcomed them in. Reimu said, "Sara, these are the youkai hunters and incident resolvers of Gensokyo. Everyone, this is Sara Letrain: she's staying with me for the time being until we find her brother."

They all waved and greeted her individually, all saying, "Welcome to Gensokyo," she sat down at the table, and they wondered where she came from, how she learned Japanese, does she know any magic, does she have any gadgets or gizmos from the outside world, and so on. They all had an infinite number of questions about the outside world, but they wouldn't really let Sara get many questions in for herself.

Then, after the time dinner was wrapping up, Sara asked, "What was that battle I saw earlier?"

The green-haired girl said, "Some youkai thieves were stealing food from the human village, so we all had to find the perpetrators."

One of the girls, some dark-haired girl in a suit a fedora, said, "And I swore we were gonna get away with it, but hey: we could've been stealing humans."

"Wait a minute," said Sara, "You're a youkai?"

"Yeah," said the dark-haired girl, nodding.

Reimu said, "Youkai tend to be more pacified post-incident, so no need to make a big deal out of it."

Sara couldn't help but stare back at the youkai with the strange eyes and sharp teeth staring back at her; she had barely noticed until it was pointed out to her. They had just essentially gone to war with this being, and now they were having a tea party with her.

Sara asked, "So you really treat these incidents like no big deal?"

The witch said, "It's a big deal, but not in the way you think it is. Personally, I just use it as an excuse to blow crap up." The others laughed, and Sara pouted.

She turned to Reimu and asked, "But what about my brother?"

Reimu said, "Your brother isn't a _giant_ priority right now. Immediate incidents are more important than finding just one boy."

Sara screamed, "More important?!" Everyone's palling around ceased, and everyone stared at Sara. Sara continued, "Don't you think it's important if I have to travel halfway around the world to this place just to find him?"

The green-haired girl said, "Whoa. Mellow out."

One girl with pink hair and her right arm wrapped in bandages said, "He may be important to you, but don't you think it would be inconsiderate to force a task on others when they have little idea of who to look for and where?"

Sara looked around at everyone and asked, "Isn't somebody available? Can somebody please help me?"

Everyone was too nervous to say no to the rowdy outsider. They just looked at eachother, waiting for somebody to speak.

Reimu said, "Kasen is right: it would be too much to force this task on others without any idea of where to exactly start on your brother. We'll wait for the next incident, and hopefully we'll find your brother. Until then, all you can do is wait."

Sara couldn't get angry in the sight of all of these youkai hunters and accompanying youkai. She finished her meal, said her goodbyes, and then cussed in English on her way out of the shrine. She'd then go to the storehouse, cry herself to sleep, and then have nightmares about her missing brother.

After Sara left the shrine, one of the girls said, "Hmph. Typical outsider, expecting us to drop what we're doing and do what she says." Everyone murmured in agreement.

Everyone but the witch, who stared out the shrine entrance.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, about an hour after breakfast, Sara heard a knock at the storehouse door. Sara was still sore over last night, and she said nothing to Reimu over breakfast. Why Reimu would want her at such a random time was beyond her; hopefully her brother had shown up, but it didn't feel like he was any of her concern.

When Sara opened the door, she nearly jumped upon seeing that blonde witch girl she saw the other day. She asked, "How's Reimu's shed treatin' ya'?"

Sara froze up at the random girl with the random statement. She looked at the witch eying all of Sara's stuff past her, and Sara said, "I-It's fine. Does Reimu need something?"

"Not quite," the witch said, leaning on the side of the door frame, "I've been hearin' about ya' whole brother thing, and I was wonderin': other than comin' to Gensokyo, have ya' actually thought of goin' out and lookin' for him ya'self?"

"Yeah," Sara said.

"Hmph," the witch said, "Rhetorical question, I guess." She walked inside and looked around at her stuff, saying, "I meant what have you actually done towards getting' him back? Because you just can't go from 'enter Gensokyo' to 'get brother back' like that. You gotta do all the borin' in-between stuff, first."

Sara watched the witch look down at the pile of granola bars, and she said, "I've been waiting for Miss Reimu to look for my brother, but there's nothing much else I can do but wait here."

The witched picked up one the bars, asking, "And how'd ya' say that's been workin' out for ya'?"

Sara didn't want to answer that question, or it'd reveal she didn't exactly think this far into her plan.

"Roman text," the witch said, looking at the bar packaging, "You musta came a long way to get stuck here."

Sara nodded.

"So," the witch said, tossing it into the pile, "ya' worked this hard to come all this way to get stuck in a shed full'a newspapers?"

Sara said, "Could you at least tell me what to do next? I can't exactly leave this shed."

The witch asked, "How'd you like some youkai huntin' equipment? I run a magic shop in the forest of magic, and it's pay-whatcha-want. If ya' up for some part time work, ya' not a power-hungry nutjob, and ya' willin' to build ya' own stuff, I could get ya' some spare parts."

Sara smiled. She said, "I can do all that. I'm up for any job if Miss Reimu will let me, and I can build my own stuff, and I'm more sane than most girls my age; after all, I did get this far on my own."

The witch chuckled at that last part. Sara gave her a questioning look, as if to ask what that laugh was all about. The witch just shrugged back.

"If ya' insist," she said, "So, what's ya' name again?"

"Sara Letrain," she said, bowing, "Nice making your acquaintance."

"Marisa Kirisame," she said, extending her hand for a handshake, once again catching Sara off-guard.

* * *

Marisa told Reimu she wanted to show Sara her magic shop in hopes of arming her in the event of an attack, but Reimu made them promise they would only be arming her for self-defense.

"I promise," Marisa lied.

Since walking would be too dangerous, Marisa asked Sara to sit on the back of her broom, warning her that they'd be flying very high and very fast: the extra height would give Marisa extra time to catch her if she fell off. Until Sara could be outfitted with the right magic to hear in-flight, Marisa had to use hand signals to tell her when they'd be speeding up, slowing down, turning, ascending, or descending. The flight was two minutes at most, soaring above a gold and red landscape of early winter trees, groups of fairies, and all manner of strange creatures in the far distance. Sara would have asked about the strange buildings, towns, and mountains in the surrounding area, but all she heard was the rushing wind. By then, Marisa gave the signal that they were descending, and Sara's heart went into her throat as they plummeted straight down into the forest, about to ram into a lone wood house.

Before ramming into the house, Marisa extended her feet forwards and "hit the breaks," and Sara jerked into Marisa's back as they screeched towards the house, stopping inches above the ground. Marisa stabilized her broom, they put their feet on the ground, and got off: Sara was still panting, but Marisa was just fine.

Marisa walked up to the door, and said, "Welcome to the Kirisame Magic Shop! Please, come inside and mind the mess."

Opening the door, out came a stench of smoke and the sounds of blaring rock music. Inside, it didn't look any more pleasant: giant piles of books, brewing equipment, and random items lied haphazardly all over the place. The house was pitch black except for a sunflower-shaped lamp wrapping itself around a lone red chair and a desk lamp by a cluttered work bench. On it were piles of chopped mushrooms, pots, vials, beakers, flasks, and burnt bullet-hole-ridden dolls that looked suspiciously like Reimu.

Marisa swiped one side of the desk, knocking a dozen books and beakers onto the floor until a sole yellow notepad remained. She grabbed it, picked up what looked like a wooden soldering iron, and began writing (or rather, burning) something onto the notepad.

"I'm willin' to trade ya' my old reactor parts," she said, "if you can go out into the Forest of Magic and grab me some phantasmal mushrooms. I got a guidebook somewhere around here, so ya' first task is showin' you got the focus to spot it."

Sara looked around at the huge piles of books, random gears and tools, and even artifacts like guitars, a jukebox, a coal grill with what looked like a rune above it to catch smoke, and what appeared be a missile warhead with the words "Lil' Mimi" scratched on the side. Sara asked, "You expect me to find it in this mess?!"

Marisa tossed the yellow notepad onto her desk and said, "That's what I meant by, 'Doin' all the steps in between.' I'll give you a hint: it's a big yellow and red book with a giant mushroom on the front. Look around and look for somethin' red n' yellow."

Sara looked around at the vast piles of stuff and froze up: this was all too much for her to look through, and even then, she only had the vaguest idea of what she was looking for. About two minutes passed, and she was still just staring around.

"I don't know where it is," Sara said.

"That's why ya' _look_ for it," she said, leaning towards Sara, "If ya' can't find one book in this house, how ya' gonna find ya' brother?"

Sara sighed, looked at one pile, and then inched her way towards it. She got on her knees to dig around, only to find Marisa's floor was moist; as if somebody had soaked all of her wood floors in tea or something. She reached her hands into the pile and pulled out books on explosives, thievery, engineering, all manner of magic, and nothing on mushrooms. She also reeled in pain when she pulled out discarded teacups chipped in half, broken tips to metal tools, shattered glass beakers. She also reeled back in disgust when she found a dead rat and a living cockroach. During all this, Marisa was operating on some octagonal gadget at her bench, fiddling with the various whirlygigs and doohickies inside. Occasionally, she'd glance over to Sara on the sticky, rancid floor, searching in vein for that book.

Hours of searching later, Sara yelled, "I can't do it. It's impossible!"

Marisa chuckled to herself, got off her workbench, and said, "Luckily for you, I do the impossible."

Marisa took a deep breath, stared at the room for a minute without blinking, and then walked over to one of the piles. She picked up the corner of a red and yellow book, and on the front was a giant mushroom. The title read, "A Magicians Field Guide to Mushroom Spotting." Sara was slack-jawed: she didn't know if she had put it there on purpose or if she was really that good.

Marisa handed Sara the book and said, "How's that for impossible?"

Marisa then gave Sara a rundown on what she was looking for: some red and yellow mushrooms that gave off a horribly bitter odor. Marisa warned her that her spotting skills would only have to get better from here on out: to venture into the forest of magic, she'd not only have to be on the lookout for the mushrooms, but fairies and various youkai.

Marisa's payment policy worked like this: she'd give you a service, and then you'd pay what you want afterward. With little need for initial equipment and not wanting to become Marisa's permanent assistant, she asked for very little. To equip her, Marisa gave her an old magic reactor: essentially a block of wood full of various conductors for phantasmal gas and a trigger that would release heat when pressed, and a pair of wings soaked in anti-gravity material, which she fit under her backpack. Sara took to the wings quite easily: all she had to do was kick her legs or more her hands like she was swimming, and she'd float around as if weightless. Of course, they'd fall apart if she moved too much and Sara would have to snap it all back together, but it was something to help her escape with ease in the event of an emergency.

The price for initial equipment was one kilogram of phantasmal mushrooms.

With about two hours until lunch, Sara ventured from Marisa's house on foot. The trees leading to Marisa's house were marked with star-shaped burn marks, and if she went too far, she'd have to turn back. Sara kept her eyes on the trees, only to hit her back against the trees she didn't see coming, snapping her flimsy wings in half, and she'd waste two minutes putting them back together. The other times, she'd drift over holes and over downhill slopes, not used to the fact she could easily float around with those wings. Eventually, she just stopped looking altogether, thinking, _Screw it. I'll just look for the stars on my way back. I need the practice anyway._

With but an hour left, Sara eventually reached a grove of red and yellow mushrooms and the scent of a thousand skunks being teargassed to death: the scent, which Marisa had warned her, would make her vision go all swimmy if inhaled. Either way, to avoid the violent urge to vomit, Sara held her breath, gathered handfuls of mushrooms and stuffed them into her backpack, praying she could get the scent out in that hot spring near the shrine. Eventually, in her rush to grab more mushrooms, she had to take in another deep breath, and she gagged on the scent and saw all manner of purple and green spots when she breathed in the tainted air. Then she thought she heard voices: tiny little girls talking about the strange girl in the green outfit gathering mushrooms.

These weren't hallucinations: a group of little girls with translucent wings and red maid outfits surrounded Sara.

"Attention human," one fairy said to the dreary-eyed human, "We are claiming these phantasmal mushrooms in the name of the Scarlet Devil Mansion!"

Another fairy said, "Give us your mushrooms, or feel the wrath of the Scarlet Devil Mansion!"

Now luckily, fairies are quite easy to trick if you give them a riddle; Sara knew this from her earliest research, and even Marisa said to give them a riddle if she ran into any fairies. So, Sara yelled, "This sentence is false!"

One fairy asked, "Huh? How can it be false if the statement is true?"

Another asked, "What's false? And if it's false, how can it be true?"

The rest of the fairies got into a discussion, and one said, "Wait! Mistress Remilia warned us to ignore things like these!"

By then, Sara was already flying through the forest: where, she didn't quite know, but it was away from the fairies. She made careful, minimal movements as she glided a few feet off the forest floor as fast as she could normally run. The scent of the mushrooms in her backpack was nowhere near as bad as it was back in the grove, but still plenty strong. However, she could start to think more clearly, and then she remembered:

_Oh crap! I forgot where I was going!_

She looked around at all of the trees, looking for the star-shaped burn marks, only to find nothing. In the distance, she heard a scream, "Over there!" Glowing red and blue orbs of light flew through the forest like roman candle shots, leaving smokey trails as they burned past her. Sara ducked behind a tree, pulled out her box-shaped reactor, and fumbled for the trigger. With no grip or sights, she couldn't aim, resorting to the "spray and pray" method as she pushed the trigger and watched green and blue projectiles fly through the golden forest: each shot felt like the flimsy wooden reactor was going to explode, or at least burn her hand off. She saw the figures scatter throughout the treeline, and then she ran in the opposite direction, praying to find a house with a star-shaped burn mark on it.

The pattern continued for the next forty minutes: she'd run, she'd glide, she'd see the red and blue glows following her through the forest, she'd fire back, they'd scatter, and then she'd repeat over and over. Then, Sara finally found a star-shaped burn mark on a tree and followed the trail without looking back, gliding faster than she ever did before, reaching speeds up to thirty kilometers an hour. The glow of the blue and red orbs lit up the forest, just as Sara saw Marisa's small brown dot of a house in the distance. Thinking she was home free, she angled her back so she could fly backwards and aim back at the fairies. She fired a couple shots, they scattered again, and then the hard wood of a tree rammed into Sara's back, shattering the wings, squashing the mushrooms in her backpack and soaking her back in phantasmal juices, and knocking her to the leaf-covered forest floor in agonizing pain.

For a moment, Sara's back was numb and everything else felt tremendous pressure, and then feeling returned with immense pain: the back of her neck felt scratched on the rough tree surface, and a massive headache pounded her head. In the distance, she saw the fairies closing in on her. She dropped her reactor when she ran into that tree, and flying was no longer an option with her wings shattered in two pieces. Instead, she got up and made a bumrush for Marisa's house. The red and blue orbs flew past her, and she ran harder. Her blood pumped as fast and hard as it could, her legs dug themselves into the piles of Autumn leaves, and then something hot punched her back, and her body fell down convulsing. Every muscle tightened and she lost all control. She couldn't breath, her sight turned into a bunch of purple zig-zags, and her hearing turned into a high-pitched ring.

When her hearing came back, she heard one of the fairies shouting, "We got her! Grab the mushrooms!" She could barely move, and she did not have enough control to stop the fairies from grabbing her backpack.

Sara heard distance fire, and then a scream as a green and yellow star-shaped orb careened into one of the fairies, then another, then another, and finally the one holding the backpack.

"Yo Sara," she heard in the distance, "You alive out there?"

Sara couldn't move, and she could only wheeze, "Barely."

Marisa ran over to her and helped her to her feet. She then grabbed the wet backpack and said, "Ya' bleeding on that neck pretty badly. Ya' got any mushrooms to drop off before we get ya' to the medicine dude?"

Sara, still woozy, just nodded. She could barely speak, only straining out, "They got crushed."

"That's fine," she said, "As long as we can boil it in a soup, it'll work. Unfortunately, we're gonna haf'ta boil ya' backpack. Ya' got anything of value in there?"

Sara didn't have anything of value in it, but she didn't want Marisa to boil it: since Brett asked to go camping when he was in boy scouts, he had all manner of camping equipment left over. Sara didn't have to buy much camping equipment because virtually everything, like the tent, the cooking supplies, and the backpack, all came from Brett.

Sara couldn't answer, and all she could do was watch Marisa drop Brett's backpack into a boiling cauldron.

* * *

Lunch was more uncomfortable than any other day before. Reimu gave Marisa and Sara dirty looks whilst pouring tea and serving their food.

"So," Marisa said to Sara, "The human village was pretty nice, huh?"

"Uh, Yes," Sara said, grabbing her tea, about to drink it.

Reimu asked, "What happened to your clothes, Sara?"

Phantasmal mushrooms are quite corrosive, so Sara's green outfit was ruined. Instead, Marisa had to swipe an outfit from the human village: a blue-and-brown patterned robe and some other undergarments I'd rather not mention other than they were too tight up top and too loose down bottom. Combine this with the fact she never liked skirts, the cold of winter, and thin material of the robe, she never felt more uncomfortable.

Marisa was going to tell her that they bought them from a store, but Reimu said, "And don't tell me the made-up story that you and Marisa bought them at a store or that your left your old outfit at Marisa's house. I would like to know what happened."

Sara said, "I ran into some fairies, and they ruined my clothes."

"How?," Reimu asked, occasionally glancing at Marisa, "You didn't accidentally fall into a pile of phantasmal mushrooms, did you?"

Marisa gave a weak smile, and Sara didn't know how to answer. Reimu continued leering at them both.

Marisa said, "Hey, if she's gonna learn self-defense, don't you think she should get some experience in the field?"

Reimu stared at Marisa and said, "You said you were arming her, not training her." She occasionally made glances back at Sara and said, "If anything, I don't think somebody already so rash should be training with somebody at least eighty times as rash."

Marisa gave Reimu a smirk, but Sara said, "I'm not rash! I think things through a lot more than most girls my age. I studied my butt off to get here, and with enough practice, I can protect myself."

Reimu said, "That's what every outsider says before they get eaten by a youkai."

Marisa had been leaning her head on one hand, looking at Reimu trying in vain to keep Sara calmed down, but then Marisa said, "Ya' know, Reimu, this isn't just some lost hiker or spoiled brat Yukari usually gaps in. Ya' say she's 'rash,' but put her in somethin' that scares her, and she'll think twice. She's got potential, but she's gotta balance herself out."

Reimu frowned at Marisa, knowing Sara would be in danger if she were to listen to to her any further.

Reimu said, "If you insist on training Sara, at least give her better equipment: I don't want any harm coming to her."

Later that day, knowing Sara needed much more equipment if she was going to survive, she decided to spend the entire rest of the day gathering materials for stronger wings, a better reactor, and perhaps a helmet to protect her head. The price would be ridiculously high, yes, but Sara was going to build a full-proof system, envisioning herself as a female Tony Stark, only without the proper radio to blare "Iron Man" as she worked. Besides, Marisa didn't have enough scrap metal for a full suit, and she urged Sara for something lightweight, graceful, and beautiful.

When Sara brainstormed ideas how what to develop, Marisa told her, "Consider ya'self lucky, because every outsider I've seen never thinks through their weapons: they want swords and so-called practical magic, and then they disappear in the forests never to be seen again. For combat in Gensokyo, only the prettiest attacks win battles. Forgot swords unless ya' gonna use them to block or cut bullets. Forget crazy practical magic like mind control, invisibility, whatever: in Gensokyo, barrage fire is king. If ya' can't spam bullets, you're as good as dead. If ya' can't dodge bullets, you're as good as dead. Here, you will encounter beings who've made firing walls of bullets of way of life for hundreds o' thousands o' years, most o' which have never or rarely lost a battle. As a human, you are at the bottom of Gensokyo's food chain, but if you're ready, you don't have'ta be. To make sure ya' don't get riddled with bullets, you'll have to out-dodge, out-fly, and, naturally, out-shoot everyone ya' meet. If you can do that, then congratulations: you are one'a the few humans who can freely travel Gensokyo, look at danger in the face, and say, 'I'm not afraid. I am a youkai hunter. I can face death, fight it, and win.'" Sara smiled at the speech, and when Marisa added, "Ya' know, in Gensokyo, that's actually happened before," she laughed.

On the first day, Sara developed a new pair of wings: metallic bars arced in two crescent shapes from a phantasmal mushroom core tied to her back, soaked in the same anti-gravity material Marisa's broom and her previous wings were soaked in. When turned on, bright blue streams of magic poured out the back in the shape of wings; it was cool to the touch, but created enough gravitational force for Sara to carry back hundreds of kilograms of scrap metal and spare parts from Marisa's house with ease.

For the next three days, Sara worked on making the wings stronger and faster, she fashioned a padded helmet with rear-view mirrors on the corners, and then she took Marisa's pitiful spare reactor, took it apart, and reverse-engineered it into a rifle. It had iron sights, a stock, and after watching distant barrage fire battles on her trips to and from Reimu's shrine for food, a multi-directional barrel. As neat as it looked, and as neat as the bright yellow test shots looked pelting the forest out back of the shrine, Sara had nowhere to test it. She worked on it for a few days, watched the shots splinter the trees and knock down those maple leaves, but one day, Reimu heard the shots and approached Sara.

Reimu asked, "How does that thing fare against fairies?"

Sara said, "I never tested it."

Reimu went, "Hmph," and said, "Well, I hope when it comes to the time to defend yourself, it will work. You're smart enough not to go out and test it, aren't you?"

Sara nodded, praying for a moment to use her new gun, or at least test her wings.

Then, on her trip over to Marisa's house to gather mushrooms for her, Marisa told her, "Gotta run: we got some strange spirits up on youkai mountain, and they need investigators. If ya' think ya' can handle rowdy fairies on ya' hunt, just drop the mushrooms on the inside of my house." She didn't have to mentioned Reimu would kill her if she brought Sara with.

Sara acknowledged her, readied her gun, and traveled out into the forest, hoping to find some fairies to shoot. She glided slowly through the forest, scanning through the yellow and red landscape for something to shoot. All she heard for the next hour was the rising sounds of barrage fire rippling down the mountain. With a gun in hand, a helmet on her head, and off in another country, she wanted to feel like she was at war: not in a scared sort of way, but the kind of excited way a teenage tomboy who watched too many Call of Duty videos on YouTube would feel. In her head, she pretended Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" was playing in the background and she's get a chance to show those idiot fairies her new firepower. At one point, she glided down to the ground so she could walk slowly and dramatically, smiling the whole time as she thought she was in a war movie.

She reached a mushroom grove, loaded up on mushrooms through the horrible stench, reached another grove, loaded up, looked around for fairies, moved onto the next grove, listened for something nearby, and by the time Sara got back to Marisa's house to drop off her mushrooms, nothing happened.

_I didn't run into a single fairy. How am I supposed to test this equipment?_

On her way back to the shrine, Sara looked out into the horizon to find a mountain lit up in barrage fire with several tiny figures chasing eachother; the incident Marisa had talked about earlier, and one both of them knew would land Sara in serious trouble if she were to participate in.

Of course Sara wasn't going to participate in it: she only made it her goal to shoot down one fairy.

Rather than move any further towards the shrine, Sara leaped out of the forest with Deep Purple's "Hush" blaring in her head; her ears popped after rocketing into the sky, but there was nothing to hear but the rushing wind.

Approaching the mountain, rowdy fairies chased and shot geometric patterns of magic at all myriads of humanoid figures, using large flowers like makeshift rifles. Sarah pushed against the wind to slow down, then she steadied her rifle and aimed at the roaming fairies; their bodies were easy to spot against white snowy peaks and grey cliffs. She pulled the trigger, watched the magic fly up to the cliff side at the swooping fairies, and watched the fairies pop into dust upon impact, dropping all sorts of munitions and items. She laughed to herself upon realizing what just happened, and then she kicked her legs against the wind to fly around the other side of the mountain to find more fairies. Going up the mountain where the real battle was taking place was too dangerous, but taking pop shots at fairies down the side of the mountain was too fun.

Up the mountain, tucked away in a small ridge, a youkai magician, who had been summoning spirits for her own personal winter vacation home, was flying away from the usual youkai hunters like Reimu and Marisa. She fired wildly up the steep cliff at the pursuing Reimu firing down the mountain, both in a steady freefall down the mountain at high speeds, both weaving around eachother's shots. The rest of the magician's fairies surrounded the rest of the hunters, distracting them and keep them from turning the one-on-one duel into a two-to-three-on-one.

About this time, as the giant ball of swirling bullets, chaos, and fairies barreled down the mountain, Sara was circling around to the exact same side to chase down an "easy target." She couldn't hear it because she was flying at an excess of eighty kilometers an hour. She didn't hear the mass of shots firing until Reimu's amulets were leaving streaks of red and white light by her. Sara looked up, gasped, and kicked her legs away from the mountain. In her rear-view helmet mirror, the magician nearly clipped her and then disappeared down the cliff, just as a wall of yellow and purple stars flew up the mountain in a dizzying spiral. She wasn't on the right angle to fly up quickly enough to get out of the way, but remembering that numbing pain from when she got shot in the forest, she wasn't going to allow herself to get hit. She kicked to the edge of the pattern's spread, where she had plenty of room to dive between the purple and yellow stars, all spaced several meters apart. When she was out of range, she looked back down to find Reimu diving between bullets spaced only a few feet apart, wondering how she was even able to dodge that. Around her, the other hunters were gunning down fairies chasing Reimu, and Sara, unable to say anything, just followed their example and shot at the fairies. This time, they were in range, and they were shooting Sara right back. Sara was getting far more practice than she could ask for: enough to terrify her to want to run away, but now there was nowhere to run.

For the moment, she ducked and dived around the volleys of multi-colored light, flying at angles that made blood rush straight into her head and give her vertigo on a moment's notice. Sara was never really prone to motion sickness, but this was giving her a run for her money: at many moments, she forgot which way was up, which direction she was flying, or if she was even really moving, falling, or spinning. She wanted to focus on the fairies to both dodge their fire and keep a sense of "up," but against the solid surface of the cliff side, the red and yellow forest floor below, or the solid blue sky, there was no up: just a spinning bunch of lights traveling in all directions and the fairies and hunters shooting them, the pressure in Sara's aching head, and the urge to throw up. Still, she _was_ getting confirmed kills: she fired, hit her fairies, and watched them pop and drop their items and whatnot down the cliff. Flight after flight of fairies came swooping in, and Sara mentally and physically prepared herself for another dizzying dogfight.

During their downtime, Marisa flew up to Sara and said, "Not bad for a blind run!"

Sara held her hand against the bare part of her forehead, panting from all of those quick hairpin movements. Sara asked, "How the hell do you dodge all of those bullets so closely together?"

Marisa said, "Practice n' focus. Remember how I found that book in the middle of that mess?"

Sara instinctively nodded, but with the heavy helmet on her head, it only made her headache even worse.

"Same principle," she said, "different situation."

Sara still couldn't wrap her head around it; what she was doing right now, just downright ducking out of the way of the fairies completely, was working, and diving between bullets was nigh impossible. For her, it was too risky to dive into the line of fire, so she kept to the corners of their line of sight, and there was nothing really wrong with it.

Thirty minutes of floating up in the air, longer than any practice flight she ever had or all of her skydiving experience combined, Reimu had shot down that magician in the yellow and purple robe. The fairies dispersed in time, and the rest of the youkai hunters laughed, cheered, and rallied up in a village on the mountain. Sara followed close behind Marisa, landing on an open-air bar with the rest of the hunters she met earlier, surrounded by cheering white-haired and black-haired beings with a mix of long ears, wolf tails or bird wings, and red tokin hats characteristic of tengu. One approached Sara and thanked her for a good job, but Sara said, "It's nothing; I was just passing by." Then she remembered part of Japanese etiquette involved beyond modest about your accomplishments, and many of them just thanked her more.

Reimu landed behind her with the body of whoever caused this incident and lied her down by a table to recover. As this happened, she stamped her feet over to Sara and asked, "What the hell do you think you're doing up there? You could have gotten yourself seriously injured or quite possibly killed!"

Sara said, "I-I was just getting some target practice in between Marisa's house and the shrine."

"Youkai Mountain is in the opposite direction of both the shrine and the Kirisame Magic shop," she said, glaring at Sara, "Now, make your way back to the shrine immediately and don't even think about leaving."

Sara bowed and said, "Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry."

Sara had only just readjusted to being back on the ground, and now she had to jump back into the sky and fly her way back, sulking, worrying about Reimu scolding her when everyone got back; perhaps she was even going to boot her out and send her back across the Hakurei Border.

Sara lied down at Reimu's table for roughly an hour, staring up at the wood ceiling; she was thankful to have that helmet off and lying still, but all she could do was worry about what Reimu would say or do. Then, she heard laughter and walking outside, and one by one, everyone entered the shrine, smiling at Sara. Even the girl in the yellow and purple robe and some of her minions were there, covered in bandages.  
_  
No doubt they're looking forward to whatever Reimu has in store for me,_ she thought.

Reimu entered calmly and told her to wait while she prepared tea and an "announcement." Everyone asked Sara, "How was it up there?" Sara told them all she was scared, stressed, and still dizzy. She said she was nowhere near ready for a battle of that size: she survived by good luck and fast flying.

Reimu returned with snacks and tea, and everyone dug in and discussed the nature of why the culprit did what she did with those spirits. Sara didn't care: this was beyond her and she probably wasn't going to see any of these people again. She just wanted to get this announcement thing over with.

Then, Reimu called for her special announcement, and she asked for everyone to raise their teacups. Sara stared at the stone-faced Reimu and listened.

Reimu said, "For having survived her first incident, despite being ordered to stay back, I would hereby like to recognize Sara Letrain as a resolver of incidents."

Sara's worry turned to confusion as everyone shouted, "Cheers!"

Sara said, "Wait. I thought you were angry."

Reimu said, "Of course I'm angry, but you made it this far: if you can help out with and survive and incident, as far as I'm concerned, you're an incident resolver. So, relax and celebrate, Sara: you've earned your title."

Sara eased herself into a smile: part of this post-incident party was for her. If she made it this far, finding Brett was in her near future.

For the moment, she enjoyed the snacks, the tea, and the palling around. It wouldn't be long before Christmas, and Sara didn't want to just spend it alone in the middle of a Japanese fantasy land.


End file.
